Sometimes They Get Confused

It's a country that finds it hard to become part of the Levant, but easily adopts Levantine customs. Not only is the ruler wealthy, his family is accumulating frequent flyer points that don't belong to it - demerits.

It's a country that finds it hard to become part of the Levant, but easily adopts Levantine customs. Not only is the ruler wealthy, his family is accumulating frequent flyer points that don't belong to it - demerits.

"Without parents," that's what children demand when Mom and Dad are dragged into the quarrel. "Without children," that's what politicians demand. "Don't drag our wives and children into the line of fire." They are private individuals who have lives of their own.

On the other hand, wives-of and children-of don't always make do with their privacy; they don't always waive the family connections, the rights and obligations of their fathers. They leave the private domain and move to the public domain, where their right to anonymity runs out. That is how they lose their private name and gain their family name - would that they come by it honestly.

Everything depends therefore on their teeth: If these are sharp and biting, and sink too deep into the pie, we are allowed to blunt them. Every person is allowed to claim the right to family privacy, as long as his family members don't enter the public gate, which is sometimes a golden or silver gate.

The wife of a prime minister does not understand why she and her children were dragged from the shadows into the spotlight; what do they have to do with the suspicions attributed to their husband and father? She is hurt. She naively told the good and beneficent interviewer that when she wanted to travel abroad she would phone the person in charge of travel at the minister's office, only to check out the supply of points still available.

There is a misunderstanding here: Not everything is allowed to stay in the family. If someone has a desire to fly, she should turn to a travel agency that sells round-trip tickets to anyone who needs them; she shouldn't turn to a government ministry, which accumulates points at the expense of public funds. I have known women in my life who never picked up a phone to the employees in their husbands' offices because they knew how to distinguish between someone who was elected and someone who happened to find herself somewhere, and it's a shame that people sometimes get confused.

Or the son of a former prime minister, who received millions from a friend of Dad's for daily surfing on the Internet and in the Aegean Sea; not in all cases must the fathers' deeds be a sign for their sons. Or the son of a former finance minister, who also managed to accumulate debts of tens of millions and more, and paid for his father's purchase of bras at Victoria's Secret. Or the daughter of another VIP, a crowner of kings and queens, who one day, to her surprise, discovered NIS 11 million in her bank account for professional consultation, and she didn't know at the time, at the tender age of 21, what her desirable profession was.

What, you'll accept the good and you won't accept the bad? The criticism? It's impossible to enjoy every world, or even two of them. And if you insist on enjoyment, you can waive rolling your eyes.

There's an important rule in the Talmud: A person's emissary is just like the person himself; how much more so, when the emissary has a similar name and address.

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